Pebbles in the pond

In the Belly of the Beast

You’ll recall we are telling the story of The Great Being, the Singular Self that is living through each of us avatars. We are watching how the story unfolds on the planet Earth through the experiences of two Agents of Cosmic Intelligence, Melchizedek and Layla, here on a Mission that started in 200,000 BC. They are now in a new life around 40,000 BC, acting suspiciously — no memories, and they forgot how to speak the local language — and are therefore captured by their fellow tribesmen and being brought back to camp. Previous installments.

Your name Blu is because of your dark skin, Layla pathed. They were hurriedly reading the minds of the men around them in order to bone up on the local language and their history with the tribe. My name, Ska — not getting any reading —

We work for this guy, Melchizedek pathed, meaning the leader of the squad escorting them. I’m his top sergeant and you’re his top corporal, the rest of these guys are privates.

How come he didn’t get driven into the sea and drown with the rest of us? Layla asked.

I think he may have deserted and thinks we may know that.

Why hasn’t he had us killed then?

I think he needs us.

As if the squad leader had been reading their minds, he abruptly called a rest stop. It was a pleasant place to take five. The sunlight filtered down cathedral fashion through the tall trees. The leader had his men move off some yards to form a perimeter and kept Melchizedek and Layla, now Blu and Ska, with him in the spotlight of the sun. He motioned them to sit and stood over them. They sat, respectfully looking at him for his orders. Alerted by his sudden stop they held off telepathic activities.

He briefly interrogated them in whispers that the rest of the squad could not hear and they responded the same way.

“Taking you to king,” he said. “What you tell king?”

“All fought bravely — outnumbered — rather than surrender died to almost last man — a few of us then swam to escape and all drowned but us. Lost memories, coming back now,” Melchizedek/Blu reported, and Layla/Ska nodded.

“Yes,” the squad leader agreed. “I swam too, came up over there —“ he pointed South where the currents would have taken him were this story true, which they sensed it was not, “—picked up these men at camp and came to look for survivors.” They nodded in support of his cover story. They would stick to that party line with the king. Satisfied, the leader called his men back and they resumed march.

Coming into the camp, the first thing that struck them was the widespread evidence of malnutrition. Unlike the soldiers guarding them — which had turned into a more amiable situation after the little talk in the clearing — the first men they saw in camp were undersized, scrawny with ribs sticking out, and unhealthy-looking — and so were their mates and children. But as they moved into the center of the encampment they realized that the men in charge were the larger healthier ones, and they lived in the protected center of the temporary base. The Alphas. The rest were consigned to the periphery where animal — or more dangerously, human — attacks would get them first and give the people in the center more time to react.

Uh-oh, Layla pathed, and Melchizedek saw what she was reacting to — a group of the weaker men were being bullied into building a dwelling in the center of camp.

Yes, slaves, Melchizedek pathed back. These people had already invented slavery. But we have a worse problem, he stated. They were coming to a stop as they approached the dwelling of the king, and the king was stepping forth into the sunlight, with a look of keen interest in their direction. Layla wondered why Melchi wasn’t further explaining what he meant by worse trouble, when she got it too: the king was a walk-in like themselves — and Melchizedek had clamped down on using telepathy.